Toxicology results eyed in Chester murder trial

MEDIA COURTHOUSE -- The trial of a 23-year-old Chester man accused of first-degree murder in a 2012 shooting spree at J&S Seafood continued Monday with testimony from a forensic toxicologist on the defendant's mental state at the time of the shooting.

Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Boogay previously told the jury that there is no question Edwin Soto Jr. was the shooter in the Feb. 19, 2012, attack that left 22-year-old Jamecia I. Toler dead and two others seriously wounded.

The question is whether Soto was so intoxicated at the time that he was unable to understand his actions and make a conscious decision to kill, warranting a first-degree murder conviction.

Defense attorneys Frank Holloran and Howard Anmuth presented expert testimony from Dr. Richard Saferstein last week, who estimated Soto's blood alcohol level at the time of the shooting, about 3 a.m., was 0.148 percent based off of blood drawn from him about an hour later.

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Saferstein concluded Soto would have consumed 10 fluid ounces of 80-proof alcohol to achieve that blood alcohol level and would have been "significantly overpowered" by the alcohol in his system.

"An average, normal human being would have a significant deterioration in judgment and self-control, and that person's cognitive abilities ... would have been significantly diminished," Saferstein said.

Although Soto does not appear to be stumbling in surveillance videos of the shooting and witnesses have testified that he did not appear drunk, Saferstein said that only indicates the defendant had enough prior experience with alcohol to be able to mask its impairing effects.

But impairments to reasoning and judgment cannot be masked even with prior experience, he added, as evidenced by the low 0.08 percent BAC threshold on drunken driving.

Forensic Toxicologist Dr. Richard Cohn disputed several of Saferstein's points Monday, however, finding Soto likely had only seven to eight drinks over the course of the evening to reach a BAC of 0.148.

That blood alcohol level might be enough to impair an individual from safely operating heavy machinery or driving a car, said Cohn.

"But it doesn't mean that they're impaired to the point where they can't assess their surroundings or sit down at a work environment cubicle and perform a function," he said.

Cohn noted Soto fired 12 shots from a semiautomatic handgun at specific targets -- Toler; his brother, Darryl Moore; and his former girlfriend, Magina Slowe, Toler's cousin -- and hit those targets, so he clearly could perform the tasks he set out to do.

The fact that Soto turned the gun on himself after inflicting a significant amount of carnage also indicates he had some presence of mind about his actions, Cohn added.

"The actions speak for themselves -- that he was not in a significantly impaired state to be aware of what was transpiring and what he wanted to do," he said.